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CHAPTER II.

THE PRIMITIVE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.

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$5. If civilization is the outcome of an evolutionary process which began on the levels of animality, it follows that early prehistoric men must once have lived the life of animals. In this chapter we shall try to obtain a clear idea of what that life was. As previously observed, we are able to trace the course of man's life backward through the Age of Metals and the Smooth Stone Period into the time when he used only rough implements of stone and wood. Below this latter point all physical evidence is lacking. Now, it makes no vital difference to the argument of this book whether man began his career on or below the level of the early stone age. But in the interests of clear thinking, it is well for us to push the view backward to a time slightly anterior to that period, and begin with man before he had learned to fashion tools. If it be objected that under such conditions man would not have been distinguished from the higher apes, and would not have been man at all, the answer is that this point is immaterial in the present connection. By carrying the view backward to the extreme limit, and trying to represent to ourselves how a creature like man would have lived in the pre-stone age- by doing this, we are able to set the total results of human progress in bolder relief against the background of nature, and hence to obtain clearer inital conceptions of our subject. The principle to be developed is the same whether we begin with man in the primitive stone age, or in the earlier time that preceded the first era of material progress.

§ 6. Great social bodies were impossible in early prehistoric times for at least two good reasons:

First the precarious food supply which is always offered by uncultivated nature;

Second human ignorance about how to make artificial use of nature.

Under such conditions it was plainly impossible for large numbers to associate in one locality. On this point we may cite some interesting observations by Mr. Lewis Morgan, a careful student of Indian life, who was adopted into the Seneca tribe. The passage to be reproduced refers to a higher plane of existence than is here to be considered; but for that reason it applies with even more force.

"Numbers within a given area were limited by the amount of subsistence it afforded. When fish and game were the main reliance for food, it required an immense area to maintain a small tribe. After farinaceous food was added to fish and game, the area occupied by a tribe was still a large one in proportion to the number of the people. New York, with its forty-seven thousand square miles, never contained at any time more than twenty-five thousand Indians, including with the Iroquois the Algonkins on the east side of the Hudson and upon Long Island, and the Eries and Neutral Nation in the western section of the state" (1).

The conditions which underlay the dispersal of the Indians over a wide territory applied with far more force to primeval men, who had made little or no material progress. It was necessarily impossible for large social groups to be formed in the early prehistoric age, since the food supply was precarious and the material arts were unknown.

§ 7. But while we are sure that primeval men must have been widely scattered, it is absolutely certain that a small measure of association obtained among them. The profound significance of kinship ties in the early history of all races proves that early social connections must have

been based, not on the accidental association of individuals, but mostly on some form of blood-relationship. The testimony of history and ethnology is reenforced by that of animal and human physiology. The care of the young was at least as necessary among primeval men as it is with the higher animals; and as a matter of logical inference it was even more necessary. This fact, of course, involved a family life of some kind. Wholly aside from such a consideration, the advantages of a limited cooperation for defense and offense could not fail to be manifest. The earliest social ties known to man, then, were those of the prehistoric family group. These groups would naturally hold together up to the point permitted by the available food supply.

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§ 8. The earliest records and traditions of all civilized races tell of great migratory movements; and savages and barbarians at the present day roam over the territories whereon they live. It is plain that the small, scattered groups of primitive men already spoken of could not, as a rule, remain permanently upon one spot. Ig norant of the material arts, and dependent upon the precarious gifts of uncultivated nature, they must have been forced into the nomadic life, restlessly wandering about in search of food.

§ 9. The early records and traditions of all civilized peoples tell not only of migrations but of conflicts which, in last analysis, resolve themselves into struggles about the food supply. The facts of savage life tell the same story. Prehistoric social groups must, therefore, have been under the necessity of contending with each other and with the lower animals for the means of subsistence.

We know that natural goods, like water, fruit, and game, are not equally distributed over the earth at the present time; and that, simply on what we call "the law of chances," they have never been everywhere the same. Consequently the food supply was not equally distributed over the earth in prehistoric times. The effect of this in

equality upon primitive men was increased by those inevitable variations in the environment which cause a drouth here, and a flood there; an unusual quickening of vegetable and animal life in one region, and a blight somewhere else. Thus it could not but happen that while some primitive groups were finding enough to sustain life, others were obtaining little or no subsistence in their accustomed haunts; and it is easy to see that these natural inequalities, together with human ignorance about the material arts, were at the basis of primeval warfare.

§ 10. The issue of a conflict between two groups over the possession of an oasis that would accomodate but one group was necessarily, as a rule, the extermination of the vanquished by the victors.

If a group obtained food enough to support its members there was little or no cause for serious internal contention. All strength would be reserved for coping with outsiders. But even the condition of internal peace could not have been steadily maintained. Famines, as we know, have persisted far into historical times; they are known today among the more backward races; and it is not difficult to form some conception of the effects of a prehistoric famine. At such melancholy times the stress of the struggle for life must have broken the bonds that held the primitive group together. Civilized men, crazed by hunger, have been known to resort to cannibalism; savages more quickly do the same; and we may be sure that early prehistoric men were no better than savages.

§ 11. These conclusions may profitably be set alongside some concrete pictures of the lowest savages at present living in the world. We cite first the testimony of Mr. Darwin, whose five years' travels are recorded in his "Journal of Researches." We should notice particularly that the people described are scattered and nomadic; that they are very ig norant of the material arts; that the groups are often compelled to fight among themselves; that these fights are in relation to the food supply; and that scarcity of food

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leads to cannibalism. The passages quoted refer to the Fuegians of South America.

"While going one day on shore near Wollaston Island, we pulled alongside a canoe with six Fuegians. These were the most abject and miserable creatures I anywhere beheld. These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures violent. At night, five or six human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground coiled up like animals. Whenever it is low water, winter or summer, night or day, they must rise to pick shell fish from the rocks; and the women either dive to collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair-line without any hook, jerk out little fish. If a seal is killed, or the floating carcass of a putrid whale discovered, it is a feast; and such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless berries and fungi.

They often suffer from famine: I heard Mr. Low, a sealing master intimately acquainted with the natives of this country, give a curious account of the state of a party of one hundred and fifty natives on the west coast, who were very thin and in great distress. A succession of gales prevented the women from getting shell-fish on the rocks, and they could not go out in their canoes to catch seal. A small party of these men one morning set out, and the other Indians explained to him that they were going on a four days' journey for food; on their return Low went to meet them, and he found them excessively tired, each man carrying a great square piece of putrid whale blubber with a hole in the middle, through which they put their heads. As soon as the blubber was

brought into a wigwam, an old man cut off thin slices, and muttering over them, broiled them for a minute, and distributed them to the famished party, who during this time preserved a profound silence. The different

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